


The Wind Whispers of You

by HorseCrazyWriter76



Series: Experiment 2318 Endings [2]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Bullying(implied), Gen, Hosital, I don't exactly know but it's something and that's the best term I have for it, Panic attack?, School, Scientist!Deceit, Unsympathetic!Deceit, Villain!Deceit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:54:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21775543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HorseCrazyWriter76/pseuds/HorseCrazyWriter76
Summary: Where Logan escaped first.This is an alternate ending to a fic titled Experiment 2318. It will not make sense if you do not read at least through chapter 16.
Series: Experiment 2318 Endings [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1569304
Comments: 3
Kudos: 29





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Starting at the same time as chapter 17.

Two sat quietly in the dark. One and Three were asleep in their blanket fort and Patty was asleep in one of her huts. It was all so small. It was the same routine every day spent in the little room. It was slightly chilly when they were out of it for hours, but when they came back it slowly warmed to their bodies, and now Two had to focus to decide if it was warm or cold. It was a little cold, he decided. He was tired, but he didn’t want to fall asleep yet. A half-formed idea took root in his head. What if he left? It was a silly idea, but he was tired, and the impossible seems more sensible when you’re tired.

The improbably seems more sensible when you’re tired. He put his hand between the door and the frame, just to feel the gap where the door had swung easily open, then quickly rushed to grab his paper and pencil. He slowly crept down the hallway, writing down everything he could. He knew it was probably nonsense, but he crept on nonetheless. He ignored the doors he passed until he came to one at the top of a flight of stairs at the end of the hallway. He pressed his ear to the door and slowly inched it open. It was dark in this room, too, although a dim light illuminated a snake curled up in a tank. He made it through another room, and another, then pushed open a door that was heavier than the rest. 

Warm, humid air rushed at him with the scent of salt. He stepped fully in to the room, the door swinging shut behind him. He looked up at the tiny pinpricks of light spread in to the darkness above him. A giant light stood to the side of him, and noises rushed against his ears. Was this outside? Elation slowly spread through him. He had to get One and Three! He reached back to open the door. It didn’t open. He examined the door and saw something he thought was the reason. He picked a stick up and started fiddling with it, trying to hit everything. He managed it and the door finally opened. Beeping started as he stepped in, blinking as he tried to remember the way back, then an alarm started blaring. 

He pushed open the door back open and ran as far as he could, pencil and paper clutched to tightly the paper tore.

*****

Evan groaned and rubbed his eyes. Had he fallen asleep over his paperwork? He needed to stop doing that. It was turning in to a habit. A habit that his back and neck just  _ adored.  _ He slowly got up and stretched, grunting as his joints popped. He rolled his head back and forth and set off to get a cup of coffee.

He went back down, slightly rejuvenated by the caffeine. He dug through the fridge and pieced together a meal for the three of them. Did he have anything planned? He didn’t think so. He flipped through his binder, the bag of breakfast tucked under his chin. He didn’t have anything planned because he had to finish writing the report for the public experiment he was doing with Remus and he had agreed to go to a concert with Joan. He yawned, nearly dropping the bag. He walked the short distance down the hallway and opened the door.

He checked the level of the water cooler, almost full because he had put a new one in last night, then set the breakfast bag down. He paused. Where was Two? He had slept to the side and was a light sleeper. He leaned down to check the fort they had built. Two heads poked above the blankets within the fort.

“One, Three,” he said. One hummed, then snuggled deeper in to the bed. He put a hand on his leg and shook him. He groaned and rolled over. Evan was about to shake him again when One sat up, rubbing his eyes.

“We’ll come eat in a minute, Word,” he mumbled, then seemed to wake up more when he didn’t see Two, “You’re not Word.”

“No, I am not.”

“Whereth word?”

“He’s not here.”

“He ethcaped?”

Evan didn’t reply. He combed through the downstairs lab and the public lab. He looked at the security monitors. At 2AM the alarms had been set off and at 2:01 it had been deactivated by Remus. He looked at the footage from 1:55AM. At 1:58 the door opened and a figure stepped out. He couldn’t make out the face through the grain, but it was clearly shorter than him:about the same height as Two. The figure stood there for a moment, then tried to open the door. He looked at the door, picked up a stick, and quickly picked the lock. Evan vaguely registered surprise at his ability, as the footage showed Two running away, a piece of paper clutched in his hand. 

It was already 8AM. Two could be anywhere.

*****

Two collapsed, panting on the doorstep of a building. He was beginning to see why Four liked his mattress so much. Even the light from the building made him feel exposed. The door slid open behind him bringing a rush of cold air. He sat up, looking at whoever had come outside.

“Remus, you’re supposed to be in your room right now,” the person chided. The person’s voice was high, like Two’s, but it had an older quality like Dr. Sanders. The person has a bump on their chest that none of them had, and their hair was long. He forced himself to stand and stop staring.

“I’m not Remus,” he forced out. The person seemed surprised.

“I’m sorry, you look just like one of our patients. Where are your parents?”

Two’s mind raced for an acceptable answer and decided on a part-truth, “I’m lost, but I know Remus. His dad knows my dad.”

The person hesitated, “Remus should be asleep, but you can come sit in his room. We’ll call his dad in the morning. Do you want a coloring book?”

Two accepted the coloring book and crayons that was pushed in to his hands and followed the person down a hallway and in to a room. A bed took up most of the room, and an open sliding door showed part of another room. A small form was curled in to the bed.

“Sit down and stay quiet,” the person whispered.

Two nodded and sat down. The person left and the form in the bed sat up, reaching over to tap something that turned a small light on. They both blinked to adjust to the light and locked eyes. 

“Four?”

Four pushed himself off the bed and limped over to Two, hugging him. 

He limped back and signed something of which Two only recognized 1 and 3.

“One and Three are still back there.”

He signed something.

“I don’t know what you’re signing.”

He grabbed the coloring book and a crayon,  _ Do you know how to leave here? _

Two looked around the room. Part of one wall was clear. He put his hand to it, then slid his hand to the buttons. He fiddled with it, then it gave with a lurch. It stopped after about 5 inches, and he locked it in to place, feeling the breeze come through. He pushed it hand through and felt a screen. A little bit of jabbing with the pencil was all the convincing it needed to tear. He pulled himself through, crashing in to a bush. He stood up and helped Four through. They shared a glance.

“Put your arm around me and let’s leave.”

Four put his arm around Two’s shoulder and they made their way away from the building.


	2. Chapter 2

It took Two and Anxiety a while to get acquainted with the world. They saw a raccoon rummaging in a garbage can and after it left tried another can. It smelled awful, but there was so much stuff in there. They started looking through more trash cans and found bits of food. A woman saw them rummaging through a can one day.

“Where are your parents?”

“We don’t have any,” Two answered. 

“Are you in a foster program?”

“What’s that?”

The woman’s face softened, “How old are you?”

“Eleven.”

“What about her?”

Two looked around to see who she was talking about, then realized she thought Four was a girl, “ _ He’s  _ eleven, too.”

“Okay. No, don’t eat that. It’s trash day and it’s in the bottom of the bag. It’s probably been there all week. I can see the mold from here,” she chided. Four dropped the food back in to the can. 

“Here, why don’t you come with me? It’s the beginning of summer, but I’ll figure out a way to get you in to school.”

_ Think?  _ Two signed. Four shrugged.

“Okay,” Two replied. 

“I’m Dulce.”

“Doesn’t that mean sweet?”

“¿Hablan español?”

“Just a couple random phrases.”

“Okay. ¿Cómo se llaman?”

“Two and Four.”

“What are your names?”

“Those are our names.”

“What do people call you?”

“Two and Four.”

“Okay.”

They went with Dulce. She helped them pick new names, Logan from Logos for Two and Virgil from the Roman poet for Four. She helped them find food and took them in to take tests and fill out paperwork.

“The placement tests will put you in your core classes, so you don’t need to worry about that. You’ll take two year-long PE courses since you don’t have a transcript from 6th grade. You can pick if you want to take dance or PE. To graduate high school you need to take two years of a language, so we recommend you start that now, and you need a fine arts. Number your top 8 choices and we’ll see what we can do,” the lady at the school said, pointing out things on the choice sheet. Logan took the sheet and pencil handed to him. He put ASL as his number one choice, then art as his fine arts, and an assortment of computer classes filled out the rest of his choices, aside from his 4th choice, where he put mythology. He put dance down as his PE. Virgil copied all the classes Logan had put down, only he put gym as his PE.

They ended up only sharing their advisory and art periods, although they had all the same classes except Virgil had been put in mythology while Logan was given a computer class.

Virgil walked in to the ASL class on the first day. The teacher was having a rapid conversation in sign language with a student. The student’s hand lifted to their mouth in the sign for lies.

_ D-lies, D-lies, D-lies, D-lies. _

He heard his heart pounding in his ears, blocking out all other sounds,  _ not good, not good, need to hear, Deceit, Deceit, Deceit. Need. Need. Need. Need. Need. _

“...gil? Virgil? Can you hear me?”

_ Strange. Strange. Strange. Need. Need. Need.  _ His mind’s eyes filled with all the ways a body could be broken, blank eyes staring up at the sky, or down at the ground, or to the side at a little tiny flower pushing through the sidewalk.  _ Need. Need. Need. _

**_AWAY_ **

He pushed away from the wall, away from the person in front of him, and sprinted away from the classroom, away from the school. He eyed a tree. It looked like he could get in to it. Deceit had climbed trees. He clambered in to it, then higher and higher, leaving the rest of the world on the forest floor. A big branch stretched away towards a taller tree that didn’t have branches to climb up on. It would take longer for anyone to reach him there. He inched in to the taller tree and up a few more branches.

Logan came to him during advisory. Virgil refused to come down, and Logan went away. He came back at the end of the school day, and Virgil carefully made his way down. They went back to Dulce, who was disappointed and worried when she heard what had happened. They went in to talk to the counselor. Dulce and the counselor had a long conversation that Virgil didn’t listen to.

He was taken out of Mythology and put in a class for people with special needs. He was given a pass to go to that classroom whenever he needed. It was mostly boring: growth mindsets and how to talk to people, but it was easy, and if he ran in and collapsed in to the quiet corner he wouldn’t be disturbed for at least half and hour before one of the teachers checked to see if they could help him. 

The kids around him whispered when they saw him run out of the classroom. They didn’t think it was fair that he could leave. He made sure he sat as close to the teachers as he could, and he started eating lunch in his science teacher’s classroom and catching up on work. He ran out of science the most, but the teacher was always willing to sit with him and help him get through the assignments. Virgil kept going to her classroom the next year, and she still helped him with the work even though she hadn’t assigned it.

*****

When Logan was 16 he got a job at a fast-food restaurant. Dulce and Logan’s combined pay was just enough to buy a small apartment. Dulce unlocked the door to the apartment. It was small, and Dulce warned that it probably had a lot of problems, but Logan and Virgil turned on the sink just to see the water go down the drain. They took turns showering, marvelling at the feeling of water on their skin. They were the rulers of the tiny space.

Logan made it in to the early college program at the high school he and Virgil attended. He graduated .1 points off from valedictorian and managed to pay tuition for his bachelors by combing a FAFSA with an academic scholarship. Virgil put his computer classes to work and started experimenting with building websites. He quickly found he was good at it, liked it, and that there was a surprisingly big market of people looking to commision websites for the amount of free website builders. Logan snuck in to a cryptography job, shedding his fast food job. Dulce nearly cried when she looked at their combined paychecks.

“You boys know you’re the best thing to come in to my life, right? And not just because of this,” she made a vague motion at the apartment. It had seemed to grow smaller since they lived in it, but none of them complained.

“I can say the same thing of you. Virgil says that, too,” Logan replied, translating Virgil’s sign. Dulce was learning sign, but she was far from fluent.

“I always wondered where you came from. It’s like God just sent you down.”

“Ah, no. We were running.”

Dulce’s gaze snapped to him. There were a few things that they had wordlessly decided not to talk about. Logan and Virgil’s past was one of them.

“What were you running from?” she asked.

Logan looked to Virgil, who nodded his assent.

“It starts with a scientist named Dr. Sanders…”

*****

Dulce shook as she stepped up to the desk at the police station.

“How can I help you?” the receptionist asked.

“I’d like to press charges against someone for child abuse.”

*****

Pinky squinted at the sun. His left side still ached from Snake’s latest experiment. A man helped Thumb hop out, his splinted leg held off the ground. He could barely see the outline of Snake’s face through a tinted glass. 

“Virgil wait, let them do their job,” a woman’s voice said, but a tall young man sprinted forward to stand in front of Pinky. Pinky looked up at him. He looked familiar somehow, then Pinky realized the similarity. It was like looking at a more well-fed him. Another young man came forward.

“Three,” the man breathed.

“Two? Four?” Patton whispered. Logan nodded, and Patton wrapped him in to a hug.

“I had no idea he would go this far. I, we, if we had any idea-”

“Hush, we’re here now.”

“We’re here now,” Cheek whispered back, hugging him tighter.

“Do I get an invite to the hug party?” Thumb asked, hopping over. Pinky straightened wordlessly to let Thumb throw an arm over his shoulders, and the other two obliged him with wordless hugs. 


End file.
